READER OF HEARTS
The Life and Teachings of a Reluctant Psychic
Darrin Owens

CHAPTER TWO
The Sevenfold Path of Spiritual Growth

Beginning in ancient times and continuing for many thousands of years, people drawn to the spiritual path were led to holy temples, esoteric orders, and mystery schools. In these places, masters prepared seekers for journeys deep within themselves. By teaching them the secrets of claiming inner power and controlling their inner dynamics, the masters initiated seekers into the life of the mystic. This began the lifelong process of achieving higher states of consciousness through experiencing the divine.

The ancient mystery schools are a thing of the past — but no matter. You can make your life a mystery school if you approach it in the right way. Every time you meet someone, every time you encounter a challenging situation, the divine teacher is asking you to free yourself from the mortal mind and to embrace the mystical. The mystical world is always there, offering you its power.

Even though everyday life is the only mystery school you need, an initiation is still important. Without the power and commitment of initiation, our eyes remain set on the fixed destination and not the journey itself, and we miss the opportunities life provides for us; we forget too easily the importance of stepping into spirit with ease and pure intent.

What I offer in the rest of this book is a curriculum for initiation into the mystery school of life. One by one, each chapter will guide you toward greater awareness of your own divine nature and how to tap into it to gain greater satisfaction in life. If you listen with your soul and put the ideas into practice, you will develop your intuition and become more sensitive to the mystical world. Once you’ve explored all seven topics, you’ll be ready to continue your journey on your own. You’ll have graduated from Darrin Owens’s modern mystery school.

Mapping the Path

Over many years of working with clients and students (and myself!), I’ve seen a common pattern of spiritual development. Many people go through particular stages in a certain order. Learning the lessons of one stage is what prepares them to enter the next stage. Once they download one piece of divine inspiration, they are ready for the next. The common pattern is to pass through seven different stages, which can be called Spiritual Awakening, Divine Darkness, Interior Power, Inner Attunement, Conscious Creation, Wholistic Living, and Oneness.

But that’s putting it too simply. The stages manifest differently for each person. Not everyone goes through them in the same order. And more important, once you pass through one “stage” and into another, you aren’t necessarily done with the earlier one. You can be well into the sixth stage but then have to deal with issues you thought you had mastered in the fourth stage. In other words, the stages can overlap, be simultaneous, or crop up more than once.

So it isn’t quite right to call the seven stages stages. They don’t work that way for people, and they don’t form a straight line to the goal of enlightenment. In a way, this should be obvious: the Gods aren’t logical, and they don’t follow a pre-written script. That’s how they keep us on our toes.

Instead of seven stages, we are dealing with something closer to seven essential components, or elements, of spiritual growth. The seven elements appear here in linear order because they have to be that way in a book. This might be a little too logical for the Gods, but it should help you track your growth more easily.

Approaching the Seven Elements

I suggest that you ponder and work with each element as it appears in this book. You may already be familiar with the experiences and issues of some elements. In fact, it is likely that you’ve already experienced — or are in the process of experiencing — the first element, spiritual awakening, because your awakening process is what prompted you to pick up this book in the first place.

Remember that spiritual growth is an evolutionary journey. Don’t think about how long it will take you to master an element, to transform it from knowledge to wisdom — just allow your intuition to guide you through it at your own pace. Go with what feels safe and comfortable to you. Above all, remember that the truths you seek are within you and nowhere else. No one else has the same connection to or perception of the divine that you have. In other words, don’t get freaked if you find yourself dealing with element five when you haven’t yet had the experiences of element four; you will find all of them inside you in due time.

The lessons contained within each of the seven elements are powerful catalysts for change. They are designed to open the spiritual centers within you, to release the potentials of your spiritual energy. This can be a scary process. Your heart can recognize a spiritual truth and tell you, “Yes! For God’s sake, listen!” But then your mortal mind, working from fear, can jump in and say, “Well, I don’t know; I’ll have to figure this out.” That’s the point when you can lose the inspiration and begin to pick apart the wisdom until there’s nothing left. You can end up saying it didn’t work, but the truth is you never let it work for you in the first place. The only way out of fear-based thinking is to face the fear, understand the reasons why it takes over, and change those dynamics.

It’s also important to remember that spiritual teachings are not difficult to embody. If they were, the Gods would have nothing to do with them. The emotional task of living a lesson may be difficult, but ultimately the wisdom that comes from it is easy to incorporate into your soul. We tend to make spirituality so detailed and full of rights and wrongs that we run the risk of leaving spirit out of it. Our mortal minds want to rationalize everything and figure it out, but the divine is meant to be experienced, not figured out. Remember this while you explore the seven elements — they are written to help you stay as simple as possible with your spirituality.

Invoking the Sacred and Living the Lessons

At the end of each chapter, there is a mystical invocation, or prayer. These are alchemical formulas, meant to be read aloud or spoken with sacred intent in your mind. They will help to invoke the sacred presence in everyday life, to guide you into a deeper relationship with the divine.

Each prayer is formulated to enhance the divine power of the lessons in the chapter. In prayer we commune with and connect to a higher source through a focused intention. Feel free to change each prayer to suit your own vision of the divine, so that you remain open to experiencing each particular mystical power. For example, where the prayer has divine presence, you may want to say God or Divine Mother instead.

I suggest repeating each invocation or prayer three times. Three is always a good activation number, and it helps the mind know that you mean business. Plus, it tells the Gods that your intent is truly to change your mind and lifestyle.

I have also added what I call Wisdom Tips after each chapter. The Wisdom Tips are practical guidelines to help you exemplify each stage of soul development with more ease and understanding.

Continuing Your Growth

If you think of yourself as a student in the mystery school of life, you will recognize — as an ancient mystic would — that the spiritual journey is a lifelong process. This approach is a necessary antidote to today’s quick-fix attitude. We want enlightenment now without the dirt work. When enlightenment doesn’t happen, we get bored and find ourselves hopping from one guru or belief to another.

The seven elements contain lifelong lessons that you will always be running into. Spiritual growth is not a contest; you don’t win and then go on a free vacation on cloud nine for the rest of your life. You become more and more conscious on many different levels throughout your life. Successfully ending an unhealthy addiction or getting through a personal crisis doesn’t mean your growth is over. You will go on to download another facet of spiritual power. The universe is a vast array of spiritual wisdom that is hidden in every cosmic molecule of life.

When I teach my Mystics Mystery School, it lasts several days and is very intense, but I tell all my students that the real lessons happen after they leave the classroom. Life is the true test of each lesson, where the learning really happens. The same is true of this book: just reading the chapters is not enough.

Being a Light for the World

The purpose of spiritual growth is not just to heal your soul and change your life for the better; it’s also to benefit those around you. The Gods train us to see clearly in order to help those around us to do the same. When one enlightened person sees the light, others will too. This doesn’t mean you should go off to some street corner and start preaching the gospel — that’s not how the Gods like the light to be spread around.

All you have to do is be you. Others will see that something in you has changed, and they will begin to feel a difference within themselves and begin to seek their own path. You may be the light post or the guidepost; it doesn’t matter which.

Think about Christ. It has been told that all he did was walk around and spread his gospel. But that isn’t the whole story. He had an inner light that was seen by every person that came into contact with him. He did not have to shout from the rooftops, “I’m a child of God! Hear me!” People knew that his inner light was divine. In this way he could work as a sacred catalyst, transforming the world by opening hearts.

Some people are open to divinely inspired personal change, and some are not. The question is, are you someone who is open? If so, you know that authentic, heart-centered practice will change your life. When you connect with the divine at a deeper level, there is nothing to do but change for the better.

Excerpted from Reader of Hearts Copyright © 2006 by New World Library
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